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A REVIEW 



OF MR. LONGFELLOW S 



EYANGELIIE. 



FROM 



THE AMERICAN REVIEW 

FOR FEBRUARY, 1848. 




3Sl7 £98 



PS 2263 
.P4 
Copy 1 



EVANGELINE.* 



Poetry, or rather the poetic, is a theme 
which must be forever re-discussed and 
rc-defined, since it is a matter upon which 
the uneducated and unreflecting must 
ever refer to their own individual impres- 
sions. Like the di\ine institution of Chris- 
tianity, it adapts itself to all hearts and 
all capacities. There is none so stockish, 
hard, and full of rage, but poetry may 
for the time change his nature : the wild- 
est savage has his chants and dances, and 
though when they are translated to us 
there is nothing poetic perceptible in them, 
yet they shall, to him, be poetry. The 
Chinese have their poems, as well as we 
ours ; but, with the perverseness apper- 
taining to most traits of character in our 
celestial antipodes, what they consider el- 
egant poetic writing, we should class with 
the maxims of poor Richard. " Keaou 
Seen Sang," says the Rev. Mr. Smith, a 
late traveller, " seemed to revel in a para- 
dise of self-complacency, as we sat to hs- 
ten to his magniloquent intonations of the 
classics. The impassioned gesture and lit- 
erary enthusiasm of Keaou, would have 
led us to believe that his mental enjoy- 
ment was very great, and the ideas con- 
veyed by the composition very sublime. 
But, on translating the immortal fragment, 
it was frequently found to consist of some 
such sentiment as these : ' He who makes 
just agreements, can fulfill his promises ; 
he who behaves with reverence and pro- 
priety, puts shame and disgrace to a dis- 
tance ; he who loses not the friendship of 
those Avhom he ought to treat with kind- 
ness and respect, may be a master.' " 
These are very sensible worldly maxims, 
but they are certainly not much more po- 
etic to us than " Time is money," " An hon- 
est man's the noblest work of God," or 
any of the points and antitheses Avhich may 
occur in poetry, and belong to it, but can 
exist without it — the pure products of the 
raised intellect. So, if we are content to 



seek nearer than China for an illustration, 
we may discern that what is poetry to one 
is not so to another ; for who has not 
seen eyes suffused by the recitation of bal- 
lads of the most silly character possible ? 
Political elections often engender serious 
poems of this sort. The Miller doctrine 
was a myth that gave birth to hymns at 
once lofty and laughable. The temple of 
the Mormons, no doubt, echoed to the 
songs of bards. 

In the multitude of tastes between these 
extreme productions and those of Shak- 
speare and Milton, there can never be a 
consensus omnium as to the true definition 
of Poetry, any more than there can be 
among artists as to what are the requisites 
of HIGH ART. There is, however, a con- 
stant tendency towards such an unanimous 
agreement, as generations rise up from 
youth to age, through the experience of 
passion and the growth of reason. It is 
very well settled that the names we have 
just mentioned stand at the head of our 
poetic literature. Some college students 
prefer Byron — others Tennyson ; Milton 
they almost universally consider very pe- 
dantic and dry ; and although they cannot 
but admit there are some humorous char- 
actei's in Shakspeare, they would rather see 
him on the stage than read him. As they 
grow up into life, however, if they 
continue (as, alas ! but few of them do 
in our spreading countiy,) to love lit- 
erary studies, they see more and more of 
the greatness of these wonderful men, and 
acquiesce more and more in the general 
verdict of the world. Thus the process 
forever goes on, the pure art of poetry 
standing before the race like a pillar of 
fire, seen by all, but seen best by those 
who are in the van, or now and then seen 
best of all by the far-reaching eye of 
genius. 

There was one not many years ago that 
saw it, as it would seem, in its very purity ; 



* Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie: 
Willimo D. Ticknor & Co. 1848. 



By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Second Edition. Boston: 



Evangeline. 



who had approached, whh his self-con- 
sciousness all awake, into its empyreal 
circle, and could define its form and fix its 
qualities and limits — Coleridge, the most 
poetic of philosophers, and the most pro- 
found and candid of critics. His mind 
seemed peculiarly formed to be at once 
the exhibiter and expounder of the highest 
forms of poetry ; he could assume the 
lyric frenzy, and could analyze it also ; he 
not only wooed the pure muse successfully, 
but without losing his own heart ; he 
united, in short, in one person, the rarest 
quahties of artist and critic, actor and 
reflector, doer and observer. The defini- 
tion of poetry he has given in his Bio- 
graphia Literaria, and especially in the 
volume containing the immortal criticism 
of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, is one 
whose excellence appeals to a man's indi- 
vidual growth in the same manner with 
that of all the great models of art, ^Az. : it 
grov/s better by time, and is more under- 
stood the more it is studied. Few persons 
in active life have leisure to read Cole- 
ridge ; indeed, it is questionable whether 
his pecuhar, minutely guarded, yet elo- 
quent, philosophical style should be recom- 
mended to young persons engaged in ac- 
tive literary or professional pursuits ; he 
is a writer who were perhaps better left to 
those who cannot avoid him. Any such 
one who may have fancied that he fully 
comprehended the distinctions in the defini- 
tion we are speaking of several years ago, 
will probably find on re-reading the pas- 
sage, ample argument for modesty in the 
retrospection. And this will arise, not 
from a certain theoiy's wedding itself to 
his mind and confining it to a particular 
track, but simply from his own personal 
experience of life ; he will understand them 
better, as he does his Milton and Shak- 
speare, not from their having educated 
him, but from his havinff ffrown older and 
thought and suffered more. It is our 
purpose to recur briefly to these distinc- 
tions and principles, culling out and ex- 
plaining some of the most important of 
them, and then to apply them to the 
work under review. * 

In the first chapter of the second vol- 
ume of the Biographia, a new edition of 
which has just been issued by the Messrs. 
Wiley & Putnam, after a short account 
of the origin of th© Lyrical Ballads, the 



author proceeds to explain his ideas, first, 
of a Poem, secondly, of Poetry itself, in 
kind and in essence. Of a poem he ob- 
serves : First. That it must be in metre 
or rhyme, or both ; it must have the su- 
perficial form. Secondly. Its immediate 
purpose must be the communication of 
pleasure. But, thirdly. " The communica- 
tion of pleasure may be the object of a work 
not metrically composed, as in novels and 
romances. Would, then, the mere super- 
addition of metre, with or without rhyme, 
entitle these to the name of poems ? The 
answer is, (and this distinction we italicize, 
that the reader may observe it carefully,) 
that nothing can permanently please which 
does not contain in itself the reason why it i& 
so, and not othenvise. If metre be super- 
added, all other parts must be made con- 
sonant with it. They must be such as to 
justify the perpetual and distinct attention 
to each part, which an exact correspondent 
recurrence of accent and sound are calcu- 
lated to excite. The final definition, then. 
so deduced, may be thus worded : A po- 
em is that species of composition, which ia 
opposed to works of science, by proposing 
for its immediate object pleasure, not 
truth ; and from all other species (having 
this object in common v/ith it) it is dis- 
criminated by proposing to itself such de- 
light from the whole, as is compatible with 
a distinct gratification from each compo- 
nent part.'' ^ 

The -discrimination here made seems to 
cover too much ; for the gratification re- 
ceived from each part in a true poem must 
be such as is also compatible with the de- 
light to be inspired by the whole ; each 
must help each and all. But the philoso- 
pher does not overlook this in his next 
paragraph : " If a man chooses to call 
every composition a poem, which is rhyme, 
or measure, or both, I must leave his opin- 
ion uncontroverted. The distinction is at 
least competent to characterize the writer's 
intention. If it were subjoined, that the 
whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, 
as a tale, or a series of interestiug reflec- 
tions, I of course admit that this is another 
fit ingredient of a poem, and an additional 
merit. But if the definition sought for be 
that of a lecjitimate poem, I answer, it must 
be one, the parts of which mutually sup- 
port and explain each other ; all in their 
proportion harmonizing vidth, and support- 



Evangeline. 



ing, the purpose and knoAvn influences of 
metrical arrangement. The philosophic 
critics of all ages coincide "with the ulti- 
mate judgment of all countries, in equally 
denying the praises of a just poem, on the 
one hand, to a series of striking lines or 
distichs, each of Avhich, absorbing the 
Avhole attention of the reader to itself, dis- 
joins it from its context, and makes it a 
separate whole, instead of an harmonizing 
part ; and on the other hand, to an unsus- 
tained composition, from which the reader 
collects rapidly the general result, unat- 
tracted by the component parts. The 
reader should be carried forward, not 
merely, or chiefly, by the mechanical im- 
pidse of curiosity, or by a restless desire 
to arrive at the final solution ; but by the 
pleasurable activity of mind, excited by 
the attractions of the journey itself. Like 
the motion of a serpent, which the Eg3^p- 
tians made the emblem of intellectual 
power ; or like the path of sound through 
the air ; at every step he pauses, and half 
recedes, and, from the retrogressive move- 
ment, collects the force which again car- 
ries him onward. Precipitandus est liber 
spiritus, saj's Petronius Arbiter, most hap- 
pily. The epithet liber, here balances the 
preceding verb ; and it is not easy to con- 
ceive more meaning, condensed in fewer 
words." 

We have quoted largely this character- 
istic passage for its beautiful clearness and 
breadth and condensation of thought. 
But the definition, it must be remembered' 
is after all only of a poem, and is intended 
to distinguish that species of writing from 
prose. Evangeline, and many works far 
inferior to it, come indisputably Avithin the 
definition. If Ave Avish to examine Avhat 
are the elements of a great poem, Ave shall 
find them in the succeeding and concluding- 
paragraphs of the chapter, under the defi- 
nition of poetry. Of course the excel- 
lence of a poem as a work of art must be 
determined by the manner in Avhich it de- 
velops those elements. After the form, 
the question is, hoAV far is the piece poe/ic? 
Or the examination might be reversely 
thus : after considering hoAv far the piece 
is poetic, the only other question must be, 
how far is the form born of and consonant 
with the quality of the piece as poetry ? 
For in poetry the form and the spirit are 
in reality inseparable, and the task of con- 



sidering them apart, to which our minds 
are compelled by the infirmity of their con- 
stitution, while it is the only Avay by which 
Ave arrive at a clear understanding of the 
Avhole subject, leads necessarily through a 
labyrinth of distinctions in Avhich it is 
hardly possible to thread one's Avay with- 
out errors. 

We might noAV consider the form of 
Evangeline, and its general keeping, and 
its intellectual ability and merit as a Avork 
of taste ; the definitions already giA'cn 
being, as we consider, for such an exami- 
nation, the best standard. But as all these 
qualities should be subordinate to, and 
created by, poetry, Ave must go still fur- 
ther into the matter abstractly before de- 
scending into particulars. Poetry is to all 
the other qualities Avhat charity is to \\\\- 
man abilities ; Avithout it all is " sounding 
brass." It is the father of all metres ; all 
varieties of rhyme are but its outAvard 
limbs and flourishes. Let us abandon oui*- 
selves once more to the guidance of the 
adventurous explorer, whose soul lived in 
the tropics of passion, Avhile at the same 
time his mind wandered clear and unchilled 
in the darkest and coldest zones of thought. 

" What is poetry ? is so nearly the same 
question with, what is a poet ? that the answer 
to the one is involved in the solution of the 
other. For it is a distinction resuUing from the 
poetic genius itself, which sustains and modi- 
fies the images, thoughts and emotions of tha 
poet's own mind. The poet, described in ideal 
perfection, brings the Avhole soul of man into 
activity, Avith the subordination of its faculties 
to each other, according to their relative worth 
and dignity He diffuses a tone and spirit of 
unity, that blends, and (as it were )/Mses, each 
into each, by thai xynlhctic and magical pou-er, 
lo uhich we have exclusively appropriated the 
name of imaginatiun. This power, tirst put in 
action by the will and understanding, and re- 
tained under their irrnmissive, though gentle 
and unnoticed, control, {laxis eff'ertiir liabenis.) 
reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of 
opposite or discordant qualities ; of sameness, 
with difference ; of the general, with the con- 
crete ; the idea, with the image ; the individ- 
ual, with the representative ; the sense of nov- 
elty and freshness, with old and familiar ob- 
jects : a more than usual state of emotion, 
with more t!ian usual order ; judgment ever 
awake, and steady sclf-po'jsession, with enthu- 
siasm and feeling profound or vehement ; and 
while it blends and harmonizes the natural and 
the artificial, still subordinates art to nature ; 
the manner to the matter ; and our admira- 



Evangeline. 



tion of the poet to our sympathy with the 
poetry." 

" Finally, good sense is the body of poetic 
genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, 
and IMAGINATION the soul, that is everywhere, 
and in each ; and forms all into one graceful 
and intelligent v/hole." 

To make this perfectly clear, it would 
be necessary to read, or rather studj^ the 
chapters in the preceding volume of the 
Biographia, leading to the discussion of 
the esemplastic power, up to the point 
where the author wisely writes himself a 
letter, advising him to proceed no further — 
a task we would recommend to none 
who are not already somewhat versed in 
metaphysical reading, and have not smat- 
tered away the original confidence in their 
ignorance, which is the surest guide to 
knowledge. Let us reverently endeavor 
to explain what he means by the Imagina- 
tion which is the soul of poetic genius, 
and the Fancy which is its drapery. In 
common parlance these words are used in- 
terchangeably : here their meanings are 
widely different. If the important words 
in this final sentence are fully understood, 
we are under no apprehension of being 
unintelligible, when we speak of the genius 
of Mr. Longfellow. 

What is meant by " good sense" is clear ; 
we understand a vigilant presiding reason, 
having the common knowledge of the 
world in greater or less degree under its 
control : in some of our modern small poets 
animal feeling seems to take its place, and 
we then have poems very well sustained, 
very well clothed, moving very grace- 
fully, but for all that extremely weak 
and nonsensical. What is - meant by 
motion is also perfectly plain ; but the 
other two words are less easily dis- 
tinguished, and no man can understand 
them fully, unless he possesses them in a 
conscious degree himself, which very 
many do not. Let us go back to the 
concluding definitions in the first volume, 
already referred to: — "The imagina- 
tion, then, I consider either as primaiy 
or secondary. The primary imagination, 
I hold to be the living power and 
prime Agent of all human Perception, 
and as a repetition in the finite mind of the 
eternal act of creation in the infinite I am." 
That is to say, as we understand it, it is that 
first principle in the mind of man, which 



enables him to say, "I exist;" over this 
the will has no control. " The secondary 
I consider as an echo of the former, co-ex- 
isting with conscious will, yet still as iden- 
tical with tiie primary in the kind of its 
agency, and differing only in degree, and in 
the inode of its operation. It dissolves, 
diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create ; 
or, where this process is rendered impossi- 
ble, yet still, at all ^events, it struggles to 
idealize and to imify. It is essentially 
vital," etc. " Fancy, on the contrary, has 
no other counters to play with, but fixities 
and definities. The fancy is, indeed, no 
other than a mode of memory emancipated 
from the order of time and space, and 
blended with, and modified by, that empir- 
ical phenomenon of the will, which we ex- 
press by the word choice. But, equally 
with the ordinary memory, it must receive 
all its materials ready-made from the law of 
association." 

In brief, it is to the imagination that we 
owe the sustaining pov:er in poetry, and to 
the fancy its imagery. The imagination 
is the wing — the fancy, the plumage ; 
that is, considering them as distinct qual- 
ities, like the " organs " of the phrenolo- 
gist. But they unite in all proportions, and 
in all degrees of submission to the primary 
consciousness. Where the poet, in the 
open day, with the disappointments of the 
past, the distraction of the present, and 
the hopelessness of the future around him ; 
with his judgment all awake, his memory 
stored with learning and his fancy teeming 
with images ; can resolutely cast himself 
loose and abandon himself to a rapture 
that is feigned and yet real — that despises 
reason, yet never goes beyond it — that in 
short sets the whole of the faculties of his 
nature into intense activity — it is by the 
strength of his imagination that he is ena- 
bled to do it ; and it is according as this 
facult)^ of his mind is put forth, that we 
feel his power. In some, it is exerted 
with less of tire will than in others. 
Shakspeare's imagination carried him 
quite beyond consciousness, so that he 
utters the divinest songs without knowing- 
it ; Milton's had more of the dull clay to 
contend with, but then, with an Atlas-like 
strength, he bears the burden to the very 
sky. Coleridge himself is another splen- 
did example of the power of the faculty 
he has analyzed. He must have Jiad an 



Evangeline. 



almost infinitely greater tenacity of con- 
scioxis reason to overcome than ordinary 
men, yet when he does rise, how strong is 
his flight ! He reminds one, though the 
reader will smile at the application, of 
what the French Lord says of Parolles, in 
All's Well that Ends Well : " Is it pos- 
sible he should know what he is, and be 
that he is ?" Like his own Albatross, he 
is an unwieldy bird ; but when he is once 
on the wing, " thorough the fog," or on 
the good south wind, he wins his Avay with 
an unconquerable ^^g•or. 

Wherever this strength is put forth, 
and under whatever variety of obstacles, 
it never fails to be felt. It is indeed " the 
faculty divine." Whether exerted with 
more or less of learning, in poetry or 
prose, in writing or in any other art, or in 
actual life, it is at once perceived and its 
force measured according to its degree. 
It is the contact of soul with soul. In life, 
it is the essence of character. Men do 
not atfect each other through dry intel- 
lect ; it is not by argument alone that 
they sway each other ; it is by the 
strength of the imagination. Some men 
have weak intellects combined with great 
force of character : it is almost miraculous 
what a power they will exert over those 
around them. In some this power de- 
velops itself, through a rough nature, in 
violence and impetuosity ; in others it 
works smoothly. It makes the tunes, with 
which, in this jangled and discordant 
world, the spirits of men play upon each 
other. Some are sweet and tender, some 
rapid and harsh, some melting, others 
inspiring. In what but the imagination 
consists the subtle powers of great rulers ? 
Mere force of will is not sufficient to ac- 
count for it. We must estimate the souls 
even of such men as Napoleon by our 
own, and certainly all the power of will 
in the whole human family would never 
suffice to account for such phenomena, 
without the presence of that " synthetic 
and magical power " which ever " struggles 
to ideahze and unify " — a power which, in 
such extreme cases, seems almost to de- 
prive the soul of its free agency, and make 
the man a " child of destiny," while in 
reality it is the excess of liberty. 

But the most lovelj^ development of 
this Imagination, which is the soul's life, 
is in Poetry and the fine arts. Here it 



acts not to gain, or primarily to overcome, 
but to please. Here it speaks through 
beautiful forms, and the delightful play of 
thoughts. It moves us, but at the same 
time enchains us. If it awes us it does 
not make us afraid, but merelj^ quickens in 
us, for the moment, a kindred thrill. 
Only here, through poetry and art, is it that 
man to man is lovely and excellent ; only 
here that his soul expands above the gross 
things of earth, and aspires to reach the 
original image of its Maker. The act of 
adoration is its highest exercise. To pray 
truly is not, though it should be one's duty 
to strive to make it so, an act for all times 
and places, nor is it to be accomplished 
easily, though to endeavor is all that is 
required of us. Hence the dim aisles of 
venerable churches, lofty music, and 
solemn ceremonies, are assistants to devo- 
tion, because they call off the Fancy from 
its ordinary scenes, and, by turning it to 
loftier ones, teach it to lead its elder sister 
the Imagination to retire into its secret 
closet and there worship the infinite Ma- 
jesty of Heaven. Next to this exercise of 
the soul, there is no art in which it de- 
velops itself against more difficulty or 
with more irresisiblc power than in music. 
This art requires infinite learning and in- 
finite physical education. It tasks both 
body and mind, at the very moment of 
imaginative rapture. The poet here must 
soar with his mind crowded to the utmost 
with mathematical symmetries, and his 
fingers literally, as well as figuratively, on 
the strings of his lyre. Hence it is an art 
in which the imagination is more won- 
drously near and present than in any 
other ; and also, one in which the great 
masters are fewer than in an}^ other, and 
the interval between them and their infe- 
riors, wider. Were it not for this, that 
the composer can educate himself into 
such a habit that he can create a whole 
work in his mind alone, or pass and repass 
it at will across his fancy, as one may a 
movement that he has often heard, the 
productions of the great musical geniuses 
would be absolute miracles ; as it is, the 
spiritual vigor stands before us more naked 
in this art than even in poetry. The 
power of Handel is felt moi'e imivereally 
and at once, than that of Milton ; many 
have admired the ever-active and graceful 
invention of Haydn, to whom Chaucer, 



Evangeline. 



would be a mere antique ; tlie qualities of 
Mozart are more instantly moving than 
those of Shakspeare ; and it is easier to 
understand Beethoven than Coleridge. 
For the learning of the science supplies in 
music the place of "' good sense " in po- 
etry ; and symmetry becomes more readily 
the habit of the mind than sense. 

But poetry, if it is below music in inten- 
sity and rapidity, is above it, and above 
painting and sculpture, in universality. If 
in it the imaginative power is not so sud- 
den, it is not, on the other hand, confined 
to so narrow a range. If it does not draw 
the spirit so near, it enables us to see more 
of it at a time. If it does not magnify so 
miich, its field of vision is greater. For it 
is not limited to symmetries of ear-forms, 
or groups, figures, or views for the eye ; 
it includes all forms and all thoughts. It 
•' brings the whole soul of man into activity, 
with the subordination of its faculties to 
each other, according to their relative 
worth and dignity." God be thanked for 
all these lovely arts, but most of all for 
this — the divinest of all ! 

Let us now descend from these abstract 
principles, and endeavor to apply them to 
Evangeline. But we must first inform the 
reader more particularly what the book is, 
than he could learn from the title-page, 
copied at the beginning of our article. 
That only informs him that it is a " tale of 
Acadie," which was the old French name 
for the peninsula that is now a part of 
Nova Scotia. The particular place where 
the story begins, is Grand Pre, a village of 
French settlers containing about a hundred 
families. The time is soon after the ex- 
pedition against Louisburg. The interest 
chiefly depends on the misfoi'times of the 
hero and heroine, Gabriel Lajeunesse and 
Evangeline Bellefontaine — either of whom, 
by the way, would have had shorter names 
had we been present at the christenmg. 
These two are betrothed and are soon to 
be married ; but before they are so, some 
English ships come into the harbor with 
orders to break up the settlement and 
carry off the inhabitants, which is accord- 
ingly done. The wretched people are land- 
ed, some at one place, some at another, and 
are thus scattered throughout this country. 
Evangehne loses Gabriel, and the whole of 
the remainder of the tale is an account of 
her feehngs and efforts to find him. At 



one time she is going down the Mississippi 
on a cumbrous boat, Avhile he is going up 
on a swift boat : she feels in her spirit 
that he is near, but does not know that he 
has passed, till her boat reaches the new 
home of his father the next day, and she 
hears that he has gone to the far West, on 
a trapping expedition. Not disheartened, 
she sets off after him the succeeding day, 
and follows him, always too late to overtake 
him, even to the base of the Ozark moun- 
tains. So passes her whole life, in a 
fruitless search for her lost lover. She 
goes everywhere : to the shores of Lake 
Huron, down the St. Lawrence, to the 
Moravian Mission — " in cities, in fields, in 
the noisy camps and battle fields of the 
army !" At length in her old age she 
lands, from the troubled sea, at Philadel- 
phia. " Pleased with the Thee and the Thou 
of the Quakers," she remains there, and 
joins the Sisters of Mercy, whose duty it 
is to visit the sick. Finally, in the time of 
the yellow fever, she sees among the dying 
at the hospital an old man with thin locks ; 
she utters such a cry of anguish that " the 
dying start iip from their pillows :" it is 
Gabriel ! He just recognizes her, and then 
the light of his eyes suddenly sinks into 
darkness, " as when a lamp is blown out 
by a gust of wind at a casement." She 
bows her head ; the long agony is over 
now, and the story ends with her saying, 
"Father, I thank thee !"-^an ejaculation 
in which, for reasons perfectly clear to 
ourself, and which we hope to make so to 
the reader, we could not refrain from 
heartily joining. 

In the first place, the author has chosen 
to write this tale, not in any usual or 
natural form of English verse, but in Latin , 
hexameter, or a form intended to resemble 
it, and without rhyme. The English muse 
is boldly invoked to permit him to sing 
(page 90 ; he has the grace not to request 
her aid) in lines which are the counter- 
parts of 

" Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula 
campum." 

The consequence is, that each line is by 
itself, and rushes down with a doleful deca- 
dence that in a short time carries the reader's 
courage along with it. Knowing, as Mr. 
Longfellow of course does, the. fate of all 



Evangeline. 



similar attempts, it is strange that he 
should liave had the hardihood to have 
made another. But it is still stranger that 
one who has so exquisite an ear for the 
melody of verse, considered by itself, 
should be so little able to distinguish its 
propriety considered in connection with a 
subject, and as aiding to imbody and carry 
out harmoniously a particular imaginative 
hue. " Nothing can permanently please 
which does not contain in itself the reason 
why it is so, and not otherwise :" — the 
reader will remember that we italicized 
this sentence in the definition of a poem ; 
it was that we might Use it here. We 
cannot see why this tale should have been 
written in this measure ; there is no con- 
sonance between the form and the sub- 
stance of the narrative. But to show this, 
let us quote a passage as a specimen. We 
will take the description of the heroine : — 



" Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer 
the Basin of Muias, 

Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of 
Grand-Pre, 

Dwelt on his goodly acres ; and with him, direct- 
ing his household, 

Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride 
of the village. 

Stalworth and stately in form was the man of 
seventy winters ; 

Hearty and hale was he, as an oak that is cov- 
ered with snow-flakes ; 

White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks 
as brown as the oak-leaves. 

Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seven- 
teen summers. 

Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on 
the thorn by the way-side. 

Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the 
browE shade of her tresses ! 

Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that 
feed in the meadows. 

When in the harvest heat she bore to the reap- 
ers at noontide 

Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah I fair ia sooth 
was the maiden. 

Fairer was she wlien, on Sunday morn, while 
the bell from its turret 

Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest 
■ with his hyssop 

Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters bless 
ings upon them, 

Down the long street she passed, with her chap- 
let of beads and her missal, 

Wearing her Norman^ap, and her kirtle of blue, 
and the ear-rings. 

Brought in the olden time from France, and 
since, as an heirloom, 



Handed down from mother to child, through 

long generations. 
But a celestial brightness — a more ethereal 

beauty — 
Shone on her face and encircled her form, 

when, after confession, 
Homeward serenely she walked with God's 

benediction upon her. 
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing 

of exquisite music." 

Is this natural poetry ? Does the nar- 
rative require these "dying falls?" We 
answer, no ; the measure jars upon us ; it 
is as though we were reading intense prose 
before a slowly nodding China mandarin. 
The face falls at the end of every line. 
Where was the necessity for choosing such 
a form ? It cannot be that the idea of its 
appropriateness rose up spontaneously in 
the author's mind on his first conceivinar 
the piece, and that he used it because he 
fell it lo be the best ; at least it is to be 
hoped it did not. That motion which 
Coleridge calls the life of poetry, is here a 
very melancholy life indeed. It is a " body 
of this death." Was it because it was a 
new form, and the author wished to show 
that -"some things could be done as well as 
others ?" Then he should not have at- 
tempted it for three reasons : first, the mo- 
tive is unworthy of a poet; secondly, the 
same thing or others very like had been 
tried before a hundred times, and it is evi- 
dent to any student that it has never suc- 
ceeded, because it does not accord with the 
structure of our language ; and, thirdly, no 
one has a right to try such novelties with- 
out being, Hke Collins in his Ode to Even- 
ing, successful. Was it because the old 
forms were exhausted ? How much richer 
would be an imitation, were it necessary to 
make such, of the melody of Comus, than 
such a monotonous tune as this ! We have 
tried all ways of reading it, now minding 
accents and pauses, now reading it as prose; 
but it is neither one thing nor the other, 
and whet-her as prose or verse is equally 
cold, affected and unnatural. The whole 
book did not accustom us to it ; and from 
its growing more and more tedious till the 
end, we do not believe another would, 
twice as bulky. 

But it may be urged, Evangeline is in a 
walk of art to which strictness of criticism 
should not be applied. It is not attempted 
to make the characters natiu'al, but only 



Evangeline. 



to make them in harmony with each other. 
It is raised very high into the poetic region ; 
and the mind which approaches it must 
for the nonce lay aside common sense and 
put on spectacles which turn all things to 
gold. To appreciate such constancy as 
Evangeline's, one must be very refined in- 
deed. The whole work, in short, is so fine 
that it required these awkward inchned 
planes of lines, that perpetually carry the 
reader down — and down — ^and down-a — 
in order to make it sufficiently remote and 
strange. It is a painting on glass, and has 
laws of its own. The attempt is not to 
ideahze, but to create. 

So far as such opinions recognize the 
propriety of works of art in which the 
fancy shall give the whole a delicate and 
peculiar hue, their justice must be admit- 
ted, of course. We suffer ourselves to be 
pleased with transparencies around lamps; 
we see landscapes in the frost pictures on 
windows ; there are innumerable golden re- 
gions above the sunset, and miniatures of 
them in -the glowmg coals ; nay, faces of 
angels and devils peep out upon us even 
from the papered walls. Whatever the 
fancy permits will come into poetry. There 
may be g-ood poems as literal as the Tales 
of the Hall, and others equally good, as fan- 
ciful as the Faery Queen. But in one, as 
much as in the other, the form and motion 
should be, because it must be, created by, 
and conform with, and belong to, and 
be a part of the essence of, the whole. For 
example, take the Ancient Mariner : noth- 
ing is more common than the ballad form ; 
but that form was never so written before. 
The poetry of the piece takes that old mea- 
sure and moulds it anew into an eloquent 
motion peculiar to itself, harmonizing with 
and heightening its general effect. The 
verse of the poem is as original as any ele- 
ment of it ; but how clearly did it grow to 
be what it is, under the guidance of the 
poet of course, yet still as of necessity. 

But in Evangeline there is no s-uch con- 
cinnity. The verse stands out like an 
awkward declaimer, or a bashful school- 
boy rehearsing young Norval, or Hohen 
Linden. It has no connection with the 
poetry ; the two are in the condition of a 
couple divorced a mensn et thoro, but not 
a vinculo matrimonii \ they are mingled 
but not combined ; in mixtion, not in solu- 
tion. We are not called upon to be first 



affected with the tale as we pi'oceed, and 
left to admire at its elegance, but are asked 
to admire first, and to be affected seconda- 
rily. The difference is just this, that the 
author is affected and not we. He is de- 
termined to be fine, and consequently 
determinately so. " O wad some power 
the giftie gie xis !" — and most especially in 
writing poetry, for there it is impossible to 
hide the secret purpose. When the spirit 
of the Muse is upon us, and we must 
prophecy ; when the whole soul is com- 
pelled by an angel with a fiery sword ; 
when, as Milton saith, the poet is " soaring 
in the high region of his fancy, with his 
garland and singing robes about him ;" then 
these over-niceties do not appear, or if they 
do, they are at once pardoned and passed 
by. When the hot simoom of the Imagi- 
nation sweeps across the burning wastes 
of the soul, the birds and beasts which 
people it fly before the blast, and the silly 
young estriches of our vanity run till they 
fall and die ; but when the strong north 
wind of the Will sweeps along with only a 
great cloud of dust, the silly creatures 
stick their heads in the sand and abide its 
utmost fierceness ! 

The idea, also, that this tale is so very- 
fine as not to be appreciated by common 
minds, and is therefore exempt from com- 
mon criticism ; that it is in what Mr. 
Willis would perhaps style a " Japonica" 
region of the poetic art, and only to be read 
after a purification, this idea which we have 
admitted as a supposed excuse for the un- 
couthness of the measm-e, is only admissible 
as such a supposition. For the characters 
and theii" motives are old and universal. The 
popularity of Madame Cottin's tale of the 
Exile of Siberia, shows how well the world 
understands the wealth and the depth of 
woman's affection. But it may be said, 
that though old and universal this affection 
is here in a highly refined form. Con- 
stancy, it may be urged, it is true, is only 
constancy whether clad in hoddin gray or 
pink satin, but that here it is clad in ex- 
tremely choice raiment. 

Now to this Ave must answer, and this 
conducts us to the general style of the 
piece, the clothing is not to our taste. It is 
not really fine, but tawdry ; not neat, but 
gaudy. It pains the eye for want of har- 
mony, and for ostentatious showiness in the 
coloring. To read the whole book cloys 



Evangeline. 



9 



the fancy. The figures and comparisons 
seldom come in naturally, but are the off- 
spring of conscious choice. The poet has 
always left him a " conceit, a miserable 
conceit." There is not a simile in the 
piece resembling in its essence either of the 
three that Burns throws in Avith a single 
dash in Tarn O'Shanter ; not one that 
makes the picture burst upon the eye, and 
thrills the heart with its imaginative sym- 
pathy. But the similes in Milton, it may 
be said, which he strews in "thick as the 
leaves in Vallombrosa," are consciously 
chosen. Not so ; though there arc minds 
to whom they must always so appear, not 
being able to lift themselves up to the 
height of his g-reatness. 

The comparison in the extract quoted — 
" Sweet was her breath as the breath of 
kine that feed in the meadows," is neither 
suggested nor suggestive, neither natiiral 
nor well chosen, but forced, unapt and not 
new. To one who never had any agricul- 
tural experience, it may seem elegant ; 
possibly to such an one it Avould come 
naturally ; but to our apprehension it is a 
simile which is not only strained, but 
degrades rather than exalts. The last line 
in the extract is another forced simile : 
" When she had passed, it seemed like the 
ceasing of exquisite music." But this is 
so pretty, that one cannot choose but par- 
don it. The author is not always so 
successful. Thus : — 

" Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, 
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the 
angels." 

This is altogether too fine. It is sick- 
ening. We cannot away with it. A writer 
who feeds American boarding-school misses 
with such bon-bons, is fair subject for mirth. 
He ought to be laughed out of the folly. 
Next thing his bust will appear in some 
barber's window in Broadway — if indeed 
the ideal is not there already. One would 
think this should suffice for the stars in one 
poem ; but no : — 

" Over her head the stars, the thovg'his of God in 
the heavens .'" 

This is naughty : we fear we shall never 
meet Mr. Longfellow in the place he 
mentions, if he allows himself to use such 
expressions. 

Sometimes he is very ingenious, so much 



so, that it becomes a pleasure to anato- 
mize his good things. Indeed, in this sense, 
the poem would not be so tedious, were 
we not called upon to feel at the same time 
for the grief of the unfortunate lovers. 
But there is just the difficulty. How one 
could elaborate so affecting a plot, in so 
minutely cool and trifling a manner, exer- 
cising his ingenuity on an unusual metre, 
and in discovering all sorts of pretty com- 
parisons and expressions, passes compre- 
hension. When, for examjjle, his heroine 
grows old, he says : — 

" Then there appeared and spread faint streaks 

of gray on her forehead, 
Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly 

horizon, 
As in the. eastern sky the first faint streaks of 

tiie morning." 

The comparison of the turning gray of 
the hair to the dawn of the morning, has 
a pleasing fancifulness, but is certainly as 
remote from real pathos, as likening a 
boiled lobster to the same phenomenon.* 
The poet does not paint by such similes ; 
they distract from his picture and attract 
to his ingenuity. The cool idt (using the 
word in its old acceptation) so predomi- 
nates over the imagination, as to cause that 
faculty to dwindle into affectation. If the 
reader is moved by such writing, it is of 
his own accord, and out of the disposition 
of his nature to supply emotion where it 
is so evidently Avanting. We can fancy 
that one shoidd feel in reading many pas- 
sages like this, and, indeed, the whole 
piece, that the writer is giving out in a 
calm and unnatural monotonous chant, 
feelings too deep to be allowed egress in 
spontaneous eloquence ; just as many must 
remember to have felt, when it was com- 
mon for college students to imitate the 
impressive oddity of Mr. Emerson's man- 
ner, at hearing some imfortunate, meek- 
eyed, muddy-brained young gentlemen 
" commune ;" or as they would, perhaps, 
have phrased it, " let the within flow out 
into the universal." There is a perfect 
analogy between this poem and its style, 
and between their thinking and conversa- 
tion ; and it might be added, that the 



* How much nearer the language of emotion is 
"the milky head of reverend Priam," in the 
rhetorical passage the first player recites in Hamlet. 



10 



Evangeline. 



poetry and the thinking are both equidistant 
from the high and the true. For what 
degree of vital heat can be felt to exist in 
a style which gives birth to such flowers 
of rhetoric, as those we are quoting ? — 

" Life had long been astir in the village, and 

clamorous labor 
Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden 

gates of the morning." 

This is not lavender, mint, or marjoram, 
" flowers of middle summer ;" but is more 
like rosemary and rue, that keep " seem- 
ing and savor" all winter ; rather it is a 
lichen, that might grow on an iceberg. 

" She saw serenelj^ the moon pass 
Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star 

follow her footsteps, 
As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wan- 
dered with Hagar !" 

The exclamation point is not ours ; it is so 
in the original, and ends a chapter. The 
reader can attach to it no other legitimate 
significance, than as indicating the poet's 
astonishment at his own conception. 

But he is very fond of comparisons from 
Scripture : — 

" The trumpet flower and the grape-vine 
Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder 

of Jacob, 
On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascend- 
ing, descending, 
Were swift humming birds that flitted from 
blossom to blossom." 

Have the old painters, did Rembrandt, 
represent Jacob's Dream with a rope lad- 
der ? The image, to our fancy, is as 
strange as the likeness of humming birds 
to angels. Jacob's ladder on Mount 
Washington, must surely be more like the 
original. 

" Wild with the winds of September 
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old 
with the angel." 

The trees collectively could not have 
wrestled like Jacob, though any one of 
them might have been said to do so with 
perfect propriety. We observe the same 
slight maccuracy in another place : — 

" Their ssouls with devotion translated, 
Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascend- 
ing to heaven." 



But here is a Scripture simile from the 
part of the poem where the reader is 
asked to be most moved. Evangeline has 
at last discovered her long-lost Gabriel 
among the sick in the hospital : — 

" Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush 
of the fever, 

As if Hfe, like the Hebrew, with blood had be- 
sprinkled its portals, 

That the Angel of Death might see the sign 
and pass over." 

Tliis is a temperance in passion, not ac- 
quired or begotten, but innate and "from 
the purpose." One wotdd suppose that 
the redness of the lips were rather an in- 
vitation for Death to enter; or an indica- 
tion like an auctioneer's flag in the window 
of a dwelling house, that the inhabitants 
were moving out. 

Frequently we meet Avitli a good thing 
spoiled by the same coldness that permits 
these unpleasing extravagancies. 

" On the river 
Fell here and there through the branches a 

tremulous gleam of the moonlight, 
Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened 

and devious spirit." 

This is very pretty indeed. The tremu- 
lousness sufficiently divides the one gleam 
into many, to make it resemble " sweet 
thoughts." But see what follows : — 

" Nearer and round about her, the manifold 

flowers of the garden 
Poured out their souls in odors, that'were their 

prayers and confessions 
Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent 

Carthusian." 

If this had stopped with " odors," it would 
have been well ; had it ended with 
"night," it Avould have been perhaps half 
as good ; as it is, the whole is bad. The 
little kitten of a thought is pinched and 
pinched till it mews horribly. Let us 
leave it and pass to another : — 

" Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the 
vulture. 

Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaugh- 
tered in battle." 

So far would have been well, but — 

" By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the 
heavens." 



Evangeline. 



11 



, Now the motion of a high soaring vulture, 
though it be Hke going up circuhir stairs 
in respect that it goes round and round, 
yet in respect that it is a smooth equable 
motion, it is very unlike going up stairs. 
Why an implacable soul should go to 
heaven at any rate, we find no sufficient 
reason, unless it be to fill out the metre of a 
very rough line ; but perchance Mr. School- 
craft's Algic Researches might furnish 
one : we observe so many instances of 
minute memory of little particulars gleaned 
out of books of travel and thrust in for 
their own sake, that we are in constant 
danger of exposing our ignorance. Possi- 
bly there may be some superstition among 
the Indians — whom the author calls, but 
without giving any note for the authority, 
"the scattered tribes of Ishmael's chil- 
dren" — to the effect that implacable souls 
go to heaven, and up circular stairs. 

Where a simile occurs which is really 
expressive, it looks as if it had been laid 
away in a note-book and copied out for the 
occasion ; thus : — Evangeline beheld the 
priest's face 

" without eitlier thought or emotion, 
E'en as the face of a clock from which the 
htinds have been taken." 

This would not be out of place in pleas- 
ant prose description : it occurs in what is 
intended to be a very serious passage. A 
little on the priest attempted to speak ; 

" but his heart was full, and 
his accents 
Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a 

child on a threshold, 
Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful 
presence of sorrow." 

But how shall such a comparison as the 
following be classified ? — The Notary has 
told Evangeline's father a story, which 
does not convince him, any more than it 
will the reader, but it puzzles him, so that 
he stood like a man who fain would speak 
but findeth no lano-uaore ; 

" And all his thoughts congealed into lines on 

his face, as the vapors 
Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window 
panes in the winter." 

It is sufficient to add to a list of such 
things, which might be extended to more 



than equal in number the pages of the 
poem, a few which are better : — 

" In the dead of the night she heard the icliis- 

fering rain fall 
Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore 

tree by the window." 

" The tire of the cart-wheel 
Lay like a fiery snake coiled round in a circle 
of cinders." 

" Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as ili". swoop 

of the eagle, 
Down the hill-side bounding they glided away 

o'er the meadows." 

" Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over 
the desert." 

These have as much naturalness and 
truth as any of their kind in the piece. But 
they are not very remarkable. Indeed, it 
may be observed of all this sort of writing, 
that where it is not strained it is common. 
Like singers who force their voices, the au- 
thors become incapable of sustaining a full, 
vigorous tone. 

The description of the heroine already 
given to show the effect of the verse, the 
doleful hexameters, will serve to show also 
the general tone of the style and the level 
of the thought and sentiment. So far as it 
is melodious and flowing it is pleasing, but 
with all its labored similes and studied 
common-place epithets, it fails to flash the 
picture upon the mind's eye with that im- 
aginative power which is the soul of high 
descriptive poetry. We are told that 
Evangeline's father was " stalworth and 
stately," and " hearty and hale as an oak 
that is covered with snow flakes :" 

'• White as the snow were his locks, and his 
cheeks as brown as the oak leaves." 

Does this comparison bring into the 
vision at once and irresistibly a clear image ? 
On the contrary, the reader must first fancy 
an oak tree in winter, and consider wherein 
it resembles a stout old farmer, and then 
fall back upon the epithets, which are cer- 
tainly not the most novel in the world. 
Stalworth, stately, and the like, have been 
used before — several times ; perhaps they 
might be found in Mr. James's novels. 

The maiden was "fair;" she had "black 
eyes " that gleamed softly beneath the 
brown shade of her tresses ; she was par- 
ticularly fair when at noontide she carried 



12 



Evangeline. 



ale to the reapers ; (at that time of day she 
would have seemed fairer to the reapers 
had she, if we may write a hexameter, 

Stood in the door of the kitchen and blown a 
tin horn for the dinner ;) 

fairer still was she when she went to 
church, where the bell sprinkled the air 
with holy sounds as the priest sprinkled 
the congregation with hyssop ; fairest of all, 
celestially so, when she walked homeward 
serenely with God's benediction upon 
her. All this does not make us see her. 
"Serenely," it is true, is a good phrase; 
it brings an indistinct impression of a sweet 
young lady walking home from church, 
and thus affects the ear poetically. But 
taking the whole together as it stands, and 
how must Evangeline impress any fancy 
which is peopled with the beautiful forms 
of our elder English poets, and our best 
novelists, with the Shakspeare's ladies and 
Walter Scott's ? Is she a worthy person to 
be introduced into suxh company ? They 
would be ashamed of so insipid a creature ; 
Perdita would never endure such a coun- 
try maid. For with all her graces and dif- 
ferent degrees of fairness, there is nothing 
of her but a name, and a faint impression, 
not of feminine characterlessness, but of 
softness. There is no soul in her. For 
seventeen she is so childish as to be silly. 
What is told about her is told in such a way, 
that while we forget the particulars there 
is nothing left that is general. 

This is perhaps because she is so very 
fine and delicate a creature that critics 
cannot understand or lift themselves up to 
the exaltation of her refinement. But 
critics can bear the desci'iption of Belphebe. 
It is not the lusciousness of the imagery 
that offends in Evangeline. It is simply 
the absence -of the " unifying poAver," that 
fuses all into one image, 'that illumines the 
creations of the fancy with a steady intense 
gleam. How delightful is the first intro- 
duction of Una : — 

" A lovely lady rode him fair beside, 
Upon a lov/ly ass more white than snow ; 
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide 
Under a veil that wimpled was full low, 
And over all a black stole she did throw. 
As one that inly mourri'd : so was slie sad, 
And heavy sat upon her palfrey slow ; 
Seemed in her heart some hidden care she had, 
And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she led." 



In truth a most lovely lady ! " As one 
thai inly mourned " — who can read it with- 
out pitying her? Here is no oak tree, 
kine breath, or hyssop sprinkling compari- 
son ; the poet is working in the glow of 
thought and emotion ; he is lost in the gen- 
tle music of his song ; he is not endeavor- 
ing to excite admiration, but to communi- 
cate the vision and the dream which his 
rapt eyes behold. Observe how incon- 
gruously, like the couplet in Goldsmith's 
Elegy, the last line follows its predeces- 
sor. Yet in reading the Faery Queen, one 
never notices such things as blemishes ; 
the level of the song admits them, and the 
fancy is kept too busy to mind them. 

" Rapt with the rage of mine own ravished 

thoughts, 
Through contemplation of those goodly sights 
And glorious images in heaven wrought, 
Whose wondrous beauty, breathing sweet de- 
lights, 
Do kindle love in high conceited sprites, 
I fain to tell the things that I behold, 
But feel my wish to fail, and tongue to fold." 
Spenser's Hymn of Heavenly Beauty. 

But in Evangeline one is obliged to no- 
tice every line. He is not permitted to 
lose his attention in the story, in the pic- 
tures, in the character, the thought, or 
emotion. The writer, with his sweet 
sentences, his pile-driving hexameters, his 
strained similes and over-nice conceits, is 
ever directly before him, and whatever of 
warmth and beauty the kind reader is 
willing to behold, he must perceive 
through a cold distorting fog of artificial- 
ity. There is no character-drawing in the 
piece ; the hero and heroine are not alive. 
We shudder at the possible mournfulness 
of the story, but not at its actual. 

" Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, 

Benedict's daughter ! 
Noblest of all youths was Gabriel, son of the 

blacksmith !" 

Upon what pitch or poetic ground-color 
was it supposed possible to work in such a 
consciously affected style, such " make be- 
lieve good children " kind of thought and 
sentiment as appears in the passage which 
this Miltonic echo concludes ? Or what 
class of readers were supposed capable of 
relishing a work which should abound in 
passages like the following — baby-talk 
forced into a canter : — 



Evangeline. 



13 



" Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf 

of the ocean, 
Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of 

the notary public ; 
Shocks of yellow hair like the silken floss of 

the maize hung 
Over liis shoulders ; his forehead was high ; 

and glasses with horn bows 
Sat astride on his nose with a look of wisdom 

supernal. 
Father of twenty children was he, and more 

than a hundred 
Children's children rode on his knee, and hoard 

his great watch tick." 

This was intended probably to be a lit- 
tle pleasant touch of simple nature ; but 
it is not. It is mere puerility. The pain- 
ful obviousness of the intent is as fatal to 
humor as to pathos. Both need the ars 
celare artem, which is here entirely Avant- 
ing. The last line is so plainly the work 
of a cold design, that it renders w^hat 
might otherwise assist in bringing out a 
domestic picture seem purely goody ish. 
It w^ould be a pretty thought for Dickens, 
in some passage where it would fii"st strike 
the fancy as funny ; but here, especially 
at the beginning of a chapter, all the 
pleasure that should be derived from the 
nicety or novelty of the observation is ut- 
terly lost. It is belittling one's self to 
Avrite or read such stuff : — 

'• There from his station aloft, at the head of the 

table, the herdsman 
Poured forth his heart and his wine together in 

endles^profusion. 
Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet 

Natchitoches tobacco." 

Whoever has obsen-ed a Tilly Slowboy 
with a wondering baby on her knee, Avhich 
she is seesawing to and fro, and amusing 
with some great story all about nothing, 
must have experienced the feeling which 
this sort of writing cannot but excite. 
Suppose Tilly is entertaining her charge 
with a history of the Avar ; she chants 
hexameters without knoAving it, merely to 
chime with the motion of her knees : — 

" President Polk is the crossest old man that 
ever was heard of, 

Fighting and killing is just what he likes and 
he cuts people's heads off 

When they don't mind him, like aunty for tea- 
table slicing the brciid ; and 

General Scott he went away off to conquer the 
Mex'cans, 



And he had a great sword, O ! ever so long, 

and he rode a stout war-horse — 
Rode a horse that probably cost him I don't 

know how many dollars ; 
And his epaulettes, my ! dear nic ! they shined 

like — anything shiny, 
And in his cap were feathers enough to stuff 

out a bolster — 
But when he come to the city, says he, ' I must 

put in a noAV one,' 
And he did it — " 

But no parody could be made colder 
and more remote from true poetic elo- 
quence than the style of Evangehne. Nor 
would it be very 'easy to write so long a 
piece, intended to be so affecting, Avith so 
little manly thinking. 

What shall be said of such an incident 
as this, and the advice which follows it : 
When Evangeline and Father Felician are 
going down the Mississippi in a cumbrous 
boat, they are one night moored under the 
boughs of Wachita Avillows. That very 
night, under the other bank of the river, a 
SAvift boat Avith Gabriel on board passes 
upAvard. The ha' er being there somethmg 
less than a mile wide, EA'angeline feels by 
some mesmeric attraction that her lover is 
near, and tells the father so, at the same 
time adding that it is only her fancy, and 
that he Avill not probably understand her : 

" But made answer the reverend man, and he 
smiled as he answered," — 

(But should smile why the reverend man, 
we confess we do not perceive here.) 

" Daughter, thy Avords are not idle ; nor are they 

to me without meaning. 
FeeUng is deep and still ; and the word that floats 

on the surface 
Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays Avhere the 

anchor is hidden. 
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the 

Avorld calls illusions." 

Most profound Father ! so profound that 
a question arises as to his meaning. If it 
would please the poor girl to think that 
her Gabriel was near because she felt so, 
that was very AA^ell ; but one does not see 
how her feeling could have any influence 
on the actual fact. She might have felt 
so had he not been passing, and the 
father's advice Avould have been just as 
pertinent ; indeed, for aught he kneAV, he 
might be a thousand miles away. If the 



14 



Evangeline. 



father really meant to say that her feeling- 
was to the actual fact what the buoy is to 
the anchor, he is talking nonsense ; if he 
meant, as he says, that her words were to 
her feelings what the buoy is to the anchor, 
and that therefore she should trust to illu- 
sions, he is talking worse nonsense. There 
is no sequitur. We can understand Defoe's 
feeling that he was urged by an overruling 
impulse to do a particular tiling, and his 
advice in such cases to follow the super- 
natural guidance ; Dr. Johnson's leaping 
over posts in London streets because he 
felt that if he could or did, something- 
would turn out well, is no absurdity to 
those who are particular to see the new 
moon over the right shoulder ; the sudden 
shooting forward of the memory by which 
for an instant the present and new seems 
old and familiar, all the occult dreams of 
poets and musicians, are easy to under- 
stand ; but this passage is not. It does 
not mean anything. Fortunately, the 
poem being almost wholly narrative, those 
whose duty it is to criticise it are spared 
the necessity of remarking upon much of 
such thinking — thinking which it would 
never be necessary to notice with severity, 
did it not appear undet- a form of much 
pretension. 

If we take the sceneral thouo-ht of the 
piece aside from what is wasted in such 
nonsense as this, and in dressing what 
should hav^ been an affecting storj^ in such 
a masquerading costume that it is, ridicu- 
lous ; that is to say, if we consider the 
bare plot and the naked thread of the 
description, there is nothing in them to be 
condemned. This is but negative praise, 
yet it is all they deserve. The story, in 
decent garb, might have told very well in 
the monthly magazines. Indeed, it is of a 
kind which would have borne quite a 
flowery style, and is perhaps sufficiently 
poetic for verse — reasonable verse, we 
mean, for no bard on earth could drag it 
or any other story safely over the quaking 
boggy syrtis of these hexameters. The 
characters, though faintly and unartisti- 
cally drawn, are yet not wholly unnatural. 
The hero and the heroine love and wish to 
be together, as all true lovers should and 
miist — Madame Sand's to the contrary 
notwithstanding. They have no particular 
life, being merely impossible combinations 
of universal qualities ; but all the best side 



of what they are, they are in a very 
proper and sensible way. Gabriel is 
simply a manly man, Evangeline a woman- 
ly woman, and each is thus not by a supe- 
rior development but by a common one. 
They are so, we mean, because the poet 
tells us that they are so, and ascribes* to 
them common traits which are universal, 
and nothing else. There is a wide diff'er- 
ence between the great universal and the 
every day. If Evangeline were really the 
great " historical-pastoral, tragical-histori- 
cal, tragical-comical," which it is sufficiently 
apparent from internal evidence it wasrin- 
tended to be, the hero and heroine would 
have been something- more than a stout 
fellow and a handsome girl ; they would 
have been all that they are and more 
beside, without being any the less types of 
humanity. The great names of epic story 
are by no means such fanciful good 
creatures. They are not so soft, but are 
more delicate. Their thoughts and emo- 
tions are no less un-individual, but are 
larger and deeper. They open to lis more of 
the experience of life. Their joy is an ex- 
ceeding- great joy ; in their sorrow the 
" waters come in unto their souls." 

Or not to rank the piece with those 
with which its style and design provoke a 
comparison — if it be looked upon (that is) 
not as an artificial attempt to accomplish 
what it has not accomplished, and what, ' 
if it had, would not have been worth ac- 
complishing, but simply as -, a pastoral 
ppem of such a length — it is not of merit 
to deserve a place among the best compo- 
sitions of that kind in the English language. 
How infinitely more poetic is any one of 
Crabbe's Tales '? or that most exquisite- 
one of Wordsworth, " Michael," the brok- 
en-hearted father, whose unfinished sheep- 
fold still remains 

" Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head 
Ghyll." 

For these are something. They are in a 
legitimate walk of art. They idealize the 
actual without departing from it. Evan- 
geline mingles the possible with the impos- 
sible, till it ends in the incredible. The 
heroine is a farmer's daughter, and has a 
heifer of her own, and is not ashamed to 
" do the milking ;" she has woven an 
" ample and high " clothes-press, with 



Evangeline. 



15 



" spacious shelves" full of linen and wool- 
len stuffs, -which are the precious duwer 
she is to bi'inrj to her husband in niarriaffe, 

" Better tlian flocks and l.erds, being proofs of 
her skill as a housewife." 

Can the reader suppose for a moment, 
that a sonsie lass like this ca er "saw serene- 
ly the moon pass," etc. ? Is she a young 
lady likely to have been troubled with 
such a mesmeric fancy as that Avhich leads 
the good Father Felician to philosophize 
so profoundly ? Of course not. She would 
have talked and thought differently. 
She might have had just as deep an affec- 
tion, just as much constancy, delicacy and 
sensitiveness as are attempted to be 
ascribed to her, but she would have ex- 
pressed Jierself quite otherwise. Rich 
people have the same hearts as poor peo- 
ple, but they do not talk in the same way ; 
and it takes a much larger experience 
than a young lady seventeen j^ears old, 
betrothed to the son of a blacksmith; can 
be supposed to have had, to enable one in 
the low plains of poverty to assume the 
tone of his fellows who walk on the gilded 
summits of affluence. Characters should 
be consistent with themselves. If cottage 
damsels are to be depicted with the senti- 
ments of ladies, we should see nothing of 
rural life but jessamines and honey-suc- 
kles. The whole should be invested with 
« harmonizimj imaginative atmosphere. 
When we have " happy peasantry" scenes 
upon the stage, Mr. Barry has the Alpin» 
mountains put into the slides, and over 
these places such a sky as was never seen 
elsewhere since the second day of Crea- 
tion. We cannot be, at the same time, 
awake and dreaming, in spite of Bunyan's 
promise. 



This great fault of Evangeline, its want 
nf keeping, more even than all its faults of 
style, forces us to deny it merit as a work 
of the IMAGINATION. It is radically defec- 
tive as a great poem, in that it lacks a 
pervading tone. It blends extremes of 
hue as wide apart as those of the pasto- 
rals of Phillips and Wordsworth's Michael. 
It is too unreal to be real, and too real to 
be unreal. Like a familiar landscape, 
done in water colors by a young lady, we 
lecognize just enough to be most intensely 
aware of the unlikeness. The characters 
remind one of Punch's designs of Bandits 
and Scotch Highlanders, worked by board- 
ing-school misses in Berlin wool. The 
whole piece ought to rank as a work of 
art with those curious specimens of carv- 
ing exhibited in museums. It is a series 
of cubes and spheres and cones in open 
spaces, cut out of a single piece of sqft 
wood, not for the purpose of producing 
an effect by its symmetry or beauty of 
proportion, but to make us admire at the 
ingenuity of the carver. Or it is like a 
Avonderful piece of inlaid work, which 
must have cost immense toil, but which, 
being irregular and formless, expresses 
nothing but its maker's patient skill. In 
brief, it is a most labored piece of fine 
writing. The words are melodiouslj'- ar- 
ranged ; the incidents are pathetic ; there 
is much pleasing luxurious description ; 
the natural feelings of the lovers are, in 
general, correctly, though incongruously 
drawn ; but with all this, the vital spark 
is wanting. The piece does not display 
the depth of emotion, nor the height of 
rapture, necessary to a great poem. It 
does not burn or glow with heat, but only 
congeals and coldly glitters. G. W. P. 



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